Wales (Cymru)

Wales should get an extra £4bn in funding from the HS2 rail project and more control over its natural resources, Plaid Cymru's leader has said.

Party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth called for "fair" funding for Wales and a £20 a week increase to child benefit in its manifesto for the general election.

He backed a "fairer" tax system with increased windfall taxes on energy companies at the manifesto launch in Cardiff, and for powers over policing to be handed to the Senedd.

Mr ap Iorwerth appealed to Welsh voters not to give Labour a "free pass" in the general election.

The supporters of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru (CBFJ Cymru), Welsh Cladiators, Save Northern Meadows and Save Penrose are ordinary people animated by a sense of social justice or a desire to do what is right for their local communities.

Yet, the conduct of the Welsh Labour Government has now forged an unusual sense of unity and purpose amongst this relatively diverse group of campaigners. Key to their critique of the Welsh Government is its failure to listen to citizens, coupled with a propensity to patronise those who seek to legitimately question or challenge government policies and decisions.

The Welsh Government has refused to disclose the cost of a trip to India undertaken by Vaughan Gething and three officials in a failed bid to persuade Tata Steel to scrap its plan to make nearly 2,000 workers redundant at Port Talbot.

The First Minister was criticised for engaging in “performative politics” by travelling to Mumbai when Tata’s chief executive TV Narendran had been in London the previous week and made it clear that the group would not reverse its plans.

In February I reported how the Deaf community was failed by the Welsh Government. It had stood by and, in the face of objections, allowed Gwent Police to take control of the sign language interpreting facility for Deaf people in Wales and create the Welsh Interpreter and Translation Service (WITS).

The Minister for Social Justice Jane Hutt MS, Maria Battle and Professor C Janczewski – Chairs of the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board – and Councillor Chris Weaver, Cardiff Council Cabinet Member for Finance, had all apologised for not consulting the Deaf community prior to WITS taking control of British Sign Language (BSL) interpreting in 2010. Only Gwent Police, the instigator of the WITS project, failed to offer an apology.

"Wales needs more funding and "economic fairness" from Westminster, Plaid Cymru has said ahead of its general election manifesto launch later.

Party leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said the general election was "about one thing - the economy".

He said Labour did not offer "meaningful change" after 14 years of "Tory cuts and chaos".

Plaid's manifesto, which is being launched in Cardiff, calls for the Welsh Parliament to have more power over natural resources and funding for public transport."

The Labour Party’s general election campaign director in Wales falsely claimed that he wrote offensive tweets about disabled and gay people years long before his involvement in Labour politics, it has emerged.

At the weekend we reported how Stewart Owadally, a close ally of Vaughan Gething whose recent Welsh Labour leadership campaign he managed, had written a series of obnoxious tweets between 2009 and 2014.

One, addressed to Nick Griffin, the former leader of the far-right British National Party when he was a Member of the European Parliament between 2009 and 2014, stated: “You can’t spell you spaz” .

The second tweet, in which Mr Owadally responded to another Twitter user, said: “I ANSWERED F***ING QUESTIONS!!! Sorry, you’re a total idiot. Can’t be bothered with you any more. Utter halfwit. Mong.”

In the third, Mr Owadally wrote: “Apparently have turned into a total retard tonight”

By now, you've probably heard there's a UK general election on 4 July.

Members of Parliament - or MPs - will be elected to the House of Commons, and the leader of the party with the most MPs will become the new prime minister.

Wales - like Scotland and Northern Ireland - also has a devolved government - meaning some powers have been passed from the House of Commons to the Welsh Parliament, or Senedd, in Cardiff Bay.

From pensioner poverty to digital exclusion, from keeping homes warm to bank closures, the Age Cymru manifesto Our Blueprint for Wales highlights key challenges facing older people in the run up to July’s general election. We urge the next UK Government to help tackle pensioner poverty by making sure older people get what they’re entitled to and are supported in other ways.

This general election matters for older people. Worn down by the pandemic and cost of living crisis, many are yearning for a more positive future for themselves, their families, and generations to come – and are eager to help bring it about.

Nuclear disarmament of the UK is something "we all should be aiming for", according to Plaid Cymru's leader Rhun ap Iorwerth.

But he said the UK's defence force should be "well-funded", able to "play their part in defending ourselves in peacekeeping roles" and ensures the welfare of military personnel after they leave service.

His comments come after Conservative minister Penny Mordaunt said in a general election debate Russia's leader Vladimir Putin would doubt Labour's willingness to use nuclear arms.

"I'm against the nuclear deterrent because I don't think that is the kind of defence that we need and should be building in the 21st Century," Mr ap Iorwerth told BBC Radio Wales' Sunday Supplement.

"We absolutely, yes, need to be making sure that we have adequate defence forces.

"I don't think that our place here in Wales is to be talking about nuclear deterrence.

A substantial majority of Nation.Cymru readers have indicated that they believe the First Minister should resign after losing a no-confidence vote in the Senedd last week.

The no confidence motion against Vaughan Gething was passed by 29 votes to 27, with all opposition members supporting it. Two Labour MSs – Hannah Blythyn and Lee Waters – were said to be ill and unable to vote.

The motion was non-binding and will not force Mr Gething to stand aside from his role as First Minister but the result is embarrassing for him, the Welsh Government and the UK Labour Party.

2,103 people voted in our self-selecting poll which ran for two days and closed at 6pm this evening (8 June). 91% of participants thought that the First minister should resign after losing the no-confidence vote.

A Plaid Cymru general election candidate has criticised his Conservative rival for living more than 100 miles away in Oxfordshire.

Tory Jack Robson, who is standing in the Pontypridd constituency, has declared on his nomination papers that he lives at an address in the Banbury constituency.

But while Banbury, estimated to be 105 miles from Pontypridd, has been held continuously by the Conservatives since 1922, with MP Victoria Prentis securing a majority of nearly 17,000 at the last election in 2019, the situation is very different in Pontypridd, where the seat has been represented by a Labour MP, also since 1922.

In 2019 Labour’s Alex Davies-Jones was elected with a majority of 5,890 over Sam Trask, the Tory candidate. On July 4 Mr Trask was due to stand as the Conservative candidate in Bridgend, but pulled out after it emerged that he had posted lewd messages about women on the myfitnesspal website.

“Use your vote” is emblazoned in huge blue letters on the bridge that flanks the main entrance to the European Parliament building in Brussels.

European elections, much like those to the Senedd, have been typified by poor turnout caused in part by confusion about the decisions at stake.

The campaign slogan for the latest European polls taking place this weekend is though wasted in Brussels. Not because the residents of the capital of Europe are so fanatical about the institutions, but because, in Belgium, voting is a legal duty, not a choice.

It’s a model that former First Minister Mark Drakeford recently suggested Wales should adopt.

“Many countries around the world, Australia and Belgium to take just two random examples, have that system,” he told BBC Radio Wales last month.

Activists raised awareness of the devastating impacts of long Covid at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay, ahead of a performance of the play Nye starring Michael Sheen. They collected signatures for The Care Society, a Senedd petition calling for a comprehensive response to the long Covid crisis in Wales. Its key components include healthcare and research, economic empowerment, and green Covid-safe infrastructure.

Members of various UK and international advocacy organisations were represented, including Long COVID Wales – the devolved Welsh campaigning offshoot of the 60,000-strong patient-led UK group Long COVID Support. Protect the Heart of the Arts, which advocates for Covid safety in the performing arts, was also in attendance.

Plaid Cymru’s candidate in Ynys Môn for the upcoming General Election says any plans to develop a nuclear power site at Wyfla must centre around the needs and interests of local communities.

The UK Government confirmed earlier today (22 May) that the Wylfa site on Ynys Môn is their preferred option for the development of a new large-scale nuclear power station.

This follows the announcement in March that the UK Government had purchased the land previously owned by Hitatchi for £160 million.

Wylfa’s twin reactor Magnox nuclear power station stopped generating power at the end of 2015 and has been decommissioned.

Hitachi pulled the plug on a project to build a nuclear power station on the site three years ago, despite pumping £2 billion into the development.

Welsh Water's pollution incidents shot up last year, despite the company spending hundreds of millions of pounds to "improve services".

The company recorded 107 pollution incidents in 2023-24, up from 89 the year before.

Welsh Water has faced criticism in recent months over its performance on leaks and raw sewage spills.

The Welsh Government has been blasted by nurses’ leaders following the pay settlement agreed with doctors which was announced earlier today (7 June).

Royal College of Nursing Wales (RCN) says it is “incensed” by the offer, which the British Medical Association (BMA) has recommended that junior doctors, specialist doctors and consultants accept.

Under the deals, junior doctors have been offered a 7.4% additional uplift, taking the total to a 12.4% uplift for 2023-24, which will be backdated to April last year.

A revised consultant pay scale has been proposed, providing higher career earnings, increased starting pay, and an additional pay rise of up to 10.1% for some consultant doctors.

Labour and the Conservatives have been urged to commit to reclassifying HS2 as an England-only project to “right a £4bn wrong”.

Delyth Jewell accused Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak of ignoring Wales as the Senedd unanimously reiterated calls for a fair share of funding from the rail project.

Plaid Cymru’s shadow transport secretary said committing to HS2 consequential funding is a litmus test for the UK Labour and Tory leaders – “a test they are failing”.

The party’s deputy leader told the chamber: “This is not just a debate about a railway line; it is about how Westminster disregards the needs and the voice of Wales.

“HS2 is a railway line in another country that we are nonetheless funding – a track that does not break our border but that is costing us billions to run.”

New road collision data published today shows that casualties have reduced on roads since the introduction of the new 20mph speed limits in September last year.

The data, which provides the total number of casualties in police recorded collisions, shows that in the last quarter of 2023 (October – December) road casualties on 20mph and 30mph roads reduced by 218, from 681 in 2022 to 463 in 2023.

The continuing scandals surrounding Vaughan Gething have cut Welsh Labour’s poll lead over Plaid Cymru at a Senedd election to just seven percentage points.

A YouGov poll carried out between May 30 and June 3 put Labour on 30%, with Plaid Cymru on 23% and the Conservatives on 19%.

This showed a significant drop in support for Labour since an equivalent poll undertaken between May 2 and May 4, which showed Labour on 36%, with the Conservatives in second place on 29% and Plaid Cymru on 20%.

The way in which Vaughan Gething secured his victory in the race to become Labour’s leader in Wales – and the nation’s first minister – was bound to store up problems for him and his party. Bad enough was the crude way in which the largest trade unions placed their collective thumb on the scale in his favour. More damaging still was Gething’s decision to fund his leadership campaign through a £200,000 donation from a company controlled by a businessman found guilty of environmental crimes. As a result, the legitimacy of his wafer-thin victory over his rival, Jeremy Miles, was always going to be open to question.

What was in doubt was the extent to which Gething would be able to rebuild the bridges that his leadership campaign had burned, so that he might at least lead his party into the next devolved election due in May 2026. Wednesday’s events in the Senedd suggest that is now unlikely. While Gething and his remaining allies persist in trying to make the frankly absurd case that it matters not if the first minister loses a confidence vote in the Welsh legislature, wiser heads are recognising that his position is becoming untenable.

What a day.

One that will go down in Welsh political history.

Just over 24 hours ago Vaughan Gething said he was confident of winning the vote.

Tonight he has had to clarify that he will not resign.

The debate preceding the vote was passionate and emotional.

An award-winning Welsh artist has accused the National Museums and Galleries of Wales of censorship by not showing one of his works in the lead-up to the UK General Election.

No Cajolery, an artwork by David Garner was meant to feature in a new exhibition at the National Museum in Cardiff called The Valleys. Garner had been commissioned to install a composite work made up of banners featuring political quotations, a large road sign as well as a billboard to be located offsite.

Vaughan Gething, the embattled First Minister, has lost a vote of no confidence tabled by the Welsh Conservatives.

The motion follows the collapse of the co-operation deal between Labour and Plaid Cymru and a series of scandals involving Mr Gething.

The motion is non-binding and will not force Mr Gething to stand aside from his role as First Minister, but the result will be highly embarrassing for him.

Ahead of the vote, Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party, offered his support for the FM, accusing Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives of “game playing”.

A blistering row has broken out between a Liberal Democrat general election candidate and his Labour rival over support for Vaughan Gething.

In recent decades Brecon & Radnorshire has swung between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, but with an expanded seat taking in the upper part of the Swansea Valley, Brecon Radnorshire and Cwm Tawe is seen by Labour as winnable.

In 2019, the unexpanded seat was won by Tory Fay Jones, who is seeking re-election.

The Welsh Labour candidate for the expanded seat, Matthew Dorrance, has now been challenged in an open letter from Lib Dem candidate David Chadwick over his support for Mr Gething, who is embroiled in a series of scandals, notably over his decision to accept donations totalling £200k from a businessman convicted of dumping toxic sludge in the protected Gwent Levels wetland landscape.

17 pro-Palestine protesters have been arrested by South Wales Police following demonstrations in Cardiff.

The bulk of the arrests were made after around 100 people gathered at Cardiff Bay Police Station to demand the release of a disabled protestor.

The man had led a sit down protest earlier in the day at the junction of Park Place and Boulevard de Nantes near Cardiff’s city centre.

Footage posted online by the campaign group Cymru Students for Palestine showed the man being led away by officers after addressing protesters with a megaphone.

Around 60 people then made their way to Cardiff Bay Police station to demonstrate the arrest.